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Updated: May 29, 2025
The Duchess, with one delicate arm stretched along the back of Mademoiselle Le Breton's chair, laughed and chattered; two young girls in virginal white placed themselves on big gilt footstools at her feet; man after man joined the group that stood or sat around her; and in the centre of it, the brilliance of her black head, sharply seen against a background of rose brocade, the grace of her tall form, which was thin almost to emaciation, the expressiveness of her strange features, the animation of her gestures, the sweetness of her voice, drew the eyes and ears of half the room to Lady Henry's "companion."
A standard open bookcase, a low sofa, a very low cocktail-type table. The chair she stood beside was standard looking, so was the big easy chair opposite. Yet she felt large in the room despite its old-fashioned high ceiling. There were several low footstools in the room; ungraceful things that were obviously wooden boxes covered with padding and leatherette.
Even the footstools belonged to a prehistoric age. There was nothing costly or elegant, but so very ancient and even comical, I had never seen anything like it, anywhere. A few oil-paintings, hung in the very border of the huge-figured paper, were small, but evidently fine. "These things were brought from Alsace," explained Miss Chrissy, as I commented freely.
In Georgian and simple French designs there are fascinating examples of chairs, settees and tables, corner cupboards and sideboards, beds and dressing-tables and chests of drawers, mirrors and footstools and candlesticks, everything both big and little which can be used in almost any of our charming rooms in the average house, with their fresh chintz and taffeta and well planned color schemes.
She rarely laughed or seemed to enjoy any thing, but sat in an easy chair all the year round, and read solemn books bound in black leather, which made her cry. Jennings her maid waited on her, fetched footstools and cushions, pushed the blinds down as soon as the cheerful noon got round to that side of the house. "Missus is uncommon poorly to-day," she announced every morning.
At the theatre he laughed uproariously, talked familiarly with the box-openers, as he did with the waiters at Philippe's, loudly demanded footstools for the ladies, and when the performance was over insisted on having the topcoats and fur wraps of his party first of all, as if he were the only three-million parvenu in the audience.
It was a picture of comfort, full of easy-chairs, cushions and footstools, worked by his mother's hand, and with no sort of thing omitted that could help to render it complete. Finally, her handsome features looked down on her darling from a portrait on the wall, as if it were even something to her that her likeness should watch him while he slept.
We have lately seen this easy work carried out most successfully, and used as mantel and table borders, covers for footstools, and as the centres of small table-cloths. Before commencing any piece of it, it is better to accumulate all the oddments of ribbons, plush, velvet, silk, and satin lying in the piece-drawer from dress trimmings or sent as patterns from shops.
Leather footstools were placed one on the top of the other by a proud papa and the company made to watch this lovely little boy score big breaks; excited and exhausted, he would go to bed long after midnight, with praises singing in his ears. "You are more like lions than sisters!" he said one day in the nursery when we snubbed him.
There were towels on the stand, a worked pincushion on the toilet, white shades and red tassels to the windows, this comfortable easy-chair beside one and a low splint rocker in the other, with queer, antique-looking soft footstools of dark cloth, tamboured in bright colors before each, white quilted covers on table and bureau, and positively, a striped, knitted foot-spread in scarlet and white yarn, folded across the lower end of the bed.
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